Statistics
Jul
6
Gun suicide article typical “advocacy journalism”
July 6, 2008 | Tagged advocacy journalism, benefits of guns, Culture War, guns and suicide | 1 Comment
The headline reads,” Gun owners more often kill themselves than others. In the high court’s ruling on gun ownership, the dissenting opinion cited suicides as a reason to uphold the firearms ban.” (Stobbe, Mike, The Associated Press, The Denver Post, Denver Newspaper Agency, Denver, CO, 07-01-08, Page 9A.) I believe this article is a typical example of mainstream media advocacy journalism masquerading as news.
The article is more remarkable for what it leaves out, than for what it presents. For example, the Japanese, who have banned guns, have a higher suicide rate in Japan than Americans, including Americans of Japanese descent. Read David Kopel’s The Samurai, The Mountie, and The Cowboy for information on Japanese gun laws and suicide. (Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1992, pages 43,44.)
Two common methods of group suicides in Japan are hoses from auto tail pipes into closed passenger compartments and charcoal braziers in tightly sealed apartments. Reports have surfaced of young Japanese strangers getting acquainted on the Internet for the purpose of group suicide. Clearly there are cultural factors at play here independent of the availability of “demonic” guns.
Is suicide even a concern of the Liberal state? What about the “right” to commit suicide. Liberal Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg in “sophisticated” Europe have policies allowing assisted suicide. Oregon, a Liberal state, has experimented with assisted death. The Hemlock Society publishes detailed instructions on how to kill yourself using pills and plastic bags. (Thank God, they don’t advocate guns. Whoops! Not politically correct to invoke the Deity. Might offend somebody.)
What about Colorado ex-Governor Dick Lamm’s “duty to die” comment? Socialized Medicine has resulted in rationed care and long waiting lists in Great Britain and Canada. Is suicide a viable option when the waiting time for treatment for a serious, painful disease exceeds the prognosis, i.e., the wait time is a year, the patient will almost certainly die in six months? What are the choices? Kill yourself? Die on the waiting list? Try to get to the U.S., before socialized medicine takes over here?
According to the article, the “experts” discount substitution of other suicide methods in the absence of guns. Why? Hanging is so easy that special curtain cords are now mandated by child safety laws to prevent accidental death. How many fatal auto “accidents” are actually suicides. Not too long ago, a man jumped from an airplane without a parachute after asking his friends if they would rather die that way or jump from a high place, such as a bridge or building. I believe suicide prevention, to the degree that a Liberal society wants to prevent suicide, is a mental health issue, not a question of what means are available to carry out the intent.
According to a recent post by Eugene Volokh on the Volokh Conspiracy, most studies that purport to show that guns increase the risk of suicide do not control for criminal affiliation. Spree killers, serial killers, depressed drug dealers, and other felons who kill themselves with guns rather than face capture and imprisonment, are almost certainly included in the suicide statistics. (See my recent post “Stay safer. Avoid criminal behavior and criminals,” 06-30-08, which can be found under the category of “Culture War” on this site.)
What about the overall comparative benefits of guns in society? The article quotes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and attempts to set up Florida Researcher Gary Kleck as the “straw man” whose counter argument is “easily” demolished by the “experts.” Not quite so fast!
The CDC, itself admits that after looking at 51 studies, it can not say that gun control has prevented a single crime. (First Reports evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Firearms Laws) Keep in mind that in most states the law looks askance at suicide and attempts to assist suicide. Remember Jack Kevorkian (Dr. Death) and the hard time that he did for his efforts in this area. The National Academy of the Sciences(NAS) reviewed 253 journal articles, 99 books and 43 government publications in its efforts to “propose new gun control strategies. The NAS found that it was impossible to say, based on that massive research effort, and some of its own studies that gun control had prevented a single crime. The conclusions of these august bastions of science? We need more research. John Lott. David Kopel and Glenn Reynolds.
The Small Arms Survey(SAS), a U.N.-affiliated organization out of Geneva recently pointed out that there are nine guns in this country for every ten Americans. What the SAS also pointed out, but what was not reported by much of the mainstream media, was that there seems to be no significant correlation between gun ownership and violence. Many countries with numerous guns have low rates of violence, while many countries with draconian gun laws have high rates of meyham. Mexico is a case in point.
Keep in mind that the above organizations have reputations as being against citizen ownership of firearms. It is an indication of their honesty in these cases that they admit that the supposed benefits of gun control have little basis in scientific fact.
A recent Kates and Mauser study, in fact, indicates that there is often an inverse relationship between the number of guns in a society and the rate of violence. (Kates, Mauser, “Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?” America’s First Freedom, NRA, Palm Coast, FLA, August 07, pages 32-35.) They do not claim to have found causation based on their research, but they have certainly documented correlation.
John Lott, on the other hand, makes a stronger claim based on his research that areas with less gun control have less crime. More guns, less crime, is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the debate. (Lott, John, …, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill., 1998.) Lott, by the way, looked at every county in the U.S., controlled for numerous variables, and made his data set available to anyone who wants to look at it.
Our article claimed that Gary Kleck, their “straw man,” found up to one million defensive uses of firearms per year. (Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Aldine de Gruyter, Hawthorne, N.Y., 1991) Kleck’s later research indicates that figure may be as high as 2.0 to 2.5 million. In over 98 percent of these cases, merely brandishing the weapon causes a felonious attack to cease, mooting the headline that you have to put your boot on the neck of your fallen assailant in order to successfully defend yourself against crime. In many other cases, the defender merely wounds the attacker, which of course, does not count as a “kill” in the records of the folks who look at this issue as black or white. (Aren’t Liberals supposed to be fans of relativism and nuance? I guess not, if it doesn’t fit their agenda.)
Kleck is a bad researcher to pick for a “straw man.” He started out with the hypothesis that gun ownership crontributes to crime. He looked at the data and changed his mind. He is a Democrat, a member of the ACLU, and takes no money from either side in this debate. The “experts” downplay the effectiveness of phone surveys, yet anti-gun organizations use phone survey results to claim that U.S. gun ownership is rapidly declining. (See my post “When surveyed, do you admit that you own a gun?” under the categories of “Culture War,” or “Politics” on this site. Kleck makes many of his claims based on FBI statistics. A bad “straw man,” indeed.
Finally the “experts” point again to a need for further study. We can take this to mean that they want to keep doing ”research,” until they get the desired result. The issue of bias in CDC ”research” was apparently one of the reasons that Congress ordered them to stop promoting gun control in 1996. Our ”objective” news article, of course, bemoans the fact that the CDC is limited in its ability to use public money to help strip the American People of their right to self-defense against crime and tyranny. If the Democrats sweep the field in November, we can expect CDC funding to increase in this area. If you own a gun and/or love freedom, think before you vote. Campaign and vote for the most pro-Second Amendment electable candidate available. We can not afford to have a Liberal Democrat in the White House.
Def Mech
Comments
1 Comment so far
Great post. Another leftist distortion links gun violence and suicide. When someone takes a gun and takes himself, that counts as “gun violence”. If they simply found another method, it wouldn’t count against America’s total. Total gun deaths in this country are wildly over-reported because most suicides are gun-related.